Heart supplies blood to the whole body by pumping the blood through a complex process of contraction and relaxation of heart muscles. The heart muscles are stimulated to contract by an electrical pulse generated by the sinoatrial node of the heart. This electrical pulse is propagated to the cardiac muscle, known as myocardium, and stimulates the myocardium to contract. It is the ordered stimulation of the myocardium that allows efficient contraction of the heart, thereby allowing blood to be pumped throughout the body.
When there is any irregularity in the generation of this electrical impulse, abnormalities arise in the functioning of the heart. To study and monitor these electrical pulses generated in the heart, electrophysiology catheters are used. Electrophysiology is the study of electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. Classical electrophysiology techniques involve placing electrodes into various preparations of biological tissue. For measuring the electrical impulse of the heart, catheters with electrodes are placed into the heart, and the pulses generated by the sinoatrial node are picked up by these electrodes and may be measured by a catheter input pod. The electrodes are connected to the slots of the catheter input pod, and the electrical signal received by each of the electrodes may be measured.
In typical electrophysiology (EP) studies, physicians place the EP catheters inside the heart of the patient, whose heart signals are to be monitored, and analyze the signals coming from various electrodes of the catheters. These EP catheters have multiple sensors to gauge the electric impulses at the location where sensors are placed. The sensor data may be received from the electrodes provided with catheters.
In most EP recording systems, an EP catheter scheme is to be created to read the EP catheter data. The EP catheter scheme creation involves configuring the EP catheter electrodes to the catheter input pod (CIP) interfaces with EP recording system hardware (e.g., in which slot of the CIP will the electrode be connected is to be determined). For example, for configuring a bipolar catheter that will be placed at the right ventricular (RV) site in the heart, the user selects the suitable nomenclature in the EP recording system interface that virtually represents two slots of the CIP. This indicates to the system that these two slots will be used by the RV catheters and is represented as RV: 1 and RV: 2.
This configuration alone will not allow the system to display the signals. The user also adds the ICEG signals, selecting RV:1 and RV:2 as +ve and −ve electrodes for the signal depending on the polarity of the bipolar RV catheter. Only now the ICEG signal may be used in the setup to display the signal when the EP examination starts.
However, for a single EP study, these steps are to be repeated a number of times for each catheter, and most of the studies will have more than 22 signals. This consumes a lot of time for the physician. A study may have a maximum of 64 signals (e.g., 128 electrodes). In the current EP catheter configuration systems, all the ICEG electrodes are configured manually using the EP catheter scheme available or preconfigured on the system and visible to the user through a dialog or interface. It is a time consuming task and prone to human errors.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,725,241 is relevant for this patent application. This patent provides a computer-implemented method including storing electroanatomic data representing electrical activity for a predetermined surface region of an organ of a patient in memory, and providing an interactive graphical representation of the predetermined surface region of the patient. A user input is received to define location data corresponding to a user-selected location for at least one virtual electrode on the graphical representation of the predetermined surface region of the patient. A visual representation of physiological data for the predetermined surface region of the patient is generated based on the location data and the electroanatomic data.
The above prior art discloses a method for post-processing of the information captured at a predetermined location by the virtual electrode and representing the physiological data graphically to a user. The prior art does not provide any way for easy configuration of EP catheter inputs. The prior art only provides a post processing operation on physiological data to give a graphical representation of such physiological data.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,382,706 B2 is another relevant piece of prior art. The patent provides a user interface system for catheter input management. The system includes a virtual catheter input module (CIM) corresponding to and representing a physical CIM that is adapted to be connected to at least one catheter. The system also includes a configuration module establishing a catheter configuration for the virtual CIM based on a plurality of configuration settings for a catheter channel. At least one catheter channel is assigned to a virtual input port on the virtual CIM. The configuration module applies the catheter configuration for at least one catheter channel when a catheter is connected to a physical input port on the physical CIM corresponding to the virtual input port on the virtual CIM.
The above prior art provides a catheter input management system where the user has to manually configure the catheters according to the catheter scheme that is virtually available. The prior art does not address the cumbersome problem of manual configuration of each catheter. The prior art only provides a virtual catheter scheme that the user uses to configure the catheters in a tedious manner physically.